Memorial Day - 2010

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Thinking of those who have served,
all who are currently serving,
and those who have died for our country.

(P.S. Thanks, TNGreatAunt, for the adorable (as always!) outfits!)

And.....summer's here.

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

As evidenced by the first bat on our house of 2010.

In the basement.

Flying at my head right as I opened the door to go down and throw in a load of laundry.

My response?

To shriek, duck, and close the door.

Then I wedged the back door open, opened all the doors on the way down to the basement, made sure the door to the rest of the house was closed, told Mr. Kluges, and went back down. No sign of him, but I sure hope he finds his way out before I'm ready to hit the hay 'cuz I'm not leaving that door open as an invitation to all his friends and relations tonight!


But I do have to say that it was a lot less stressful to have him fly at my face in the basement than to wake up to him fletting around my bedroom in the middle of the night.

WW - After the Tooth Fairy's 1st Visit

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

P.S. Yes, I know her eyes look rather, rather, rather greener than usual.
She saw some of the fun things you can do on Picnik.com and wanted to try 'em. :)

5K Goal Progress

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Sorry for the brief/only photo posts. Spring gets busy, what with all the outside projects, end of the school year stuff, outside projects and spring cleaning. Oh, and outside projects. Plus, who wants to sit at the computer inside a non-air-conditioned house when at least outside there might be a bit of a breeze.

Wanted to share with y'all a bit of progress on my goal of running a 5K this year. (And actually, the related goal of exercising most nights/week.) It's going great! I'm in Couch-to-5K's Week 8, which has a 5 minute brisk walk to warm-up, then 28 (TWENTY-EIGHT) minutes of running. Which I can do! In fact, on Tuesday, while running in our nice cool basement & watching the Lost finale, I kept going after those 28 minutes 'cuz I only needed less than 2/10 of a miles to get to 3. WHICH I DID! So now I've run 3 miles!

Granted, it was in our nice cool (high 60s) basement, on a nice flat treadmill, while watching a very engaging show. I know that outside will be warmer, hillier, and less distracting - and therefore harder.

But still! I did it once! And that's the the start of doing it more!

This Couch-to-5K thing has definitely helped with the "exercise most nights each week" goal. If I don't do my 3 runs each week, I can definitely tell. I fall behind & have to repeat at least part of a week to catch up. So, between 3 runs and 1 belly dance class each week, I'm golden!

I do have to say I'm a bit annoyed by one factor (well, one in particular). When I made this a goal, I thought that focusing on this exercise, making sure it was regular, looking toward a very measurable goal would help with losing a few pounds as a side effect. Well, apparently exercise makes me hungry. No magical poundage decline, but I AM in definitely better shape & can run for minutes and minutes and minutes at a time! 5K, here I come!!!

It's planting time!

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Ah, the wonderful warmth of late spring! It was so warm so early, then cold again (a big ol' passel of snow, even!), and now finally more appropriately timed good weather.

So I'm trying to get my garden planted! We have lots of herbs that successfully made it through the winter (parsley, chives, both regular and chocolate mint, a little thyme and sage, my word the sage!), plus the strawberry plants from a neighbor are flowering and making cute little itty berries! (Penguin checks on them daily.) And we took all of 5 minutes this past weekend to plant the pumpkins & cucumbers, since that didn't involve much need for accuracy in where they went/straight rows, etc.

But the rest of it? The beans, the peas, the beets... yeah, all those seeds are languishing away in their little packets. BUT, yesterday I did measure and mark out their rows, so hopefully this afternoon, once Penguin wakes up from her (blessed, blessed) nap, a-farming we might go!

WW - I think it's already been played on for more hours than it took to make, which is saying A LOT!

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Wordless only in the sense that words I'd like to use would be unprintable

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

I'd dearly love to show you all a photo of my own little Pumpkin, with a big smile, lacking one of her bottom front teeth. Hooray for her first lost tooth & tooth fairy visit! (Insert semi-maudlin moment of "how can she be getting so big so fast?!?!?") However, I tried to update my camera's wireless download blah blah something, and now I cannot seem to transfer anything from my camera to my computer, wirelessly or connected. So, unless/until I get that fixed, you'll have to just imagine it.

WW - Frames

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Whirlwind Weekend

(c) 2010 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Our weekend was busy, busy, busy! Grandpa Jem & Gramma Yori came to visit (and work us into the ground). Along with hours of work spent on the (very large) playground, we had a very busy & exciting time!

A birthday dinner date...

...followed by CAKE!

(Happy 3rd Birthday, Penguin!!!)

Pumpkin's first loose tooth...

...and her second attempt at roller-skating.

And finally, Gramma Yori earning her keep.